Thai Food II

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to once again take you on the culinary adventure that is Thai food. Today: weird fruit and northern Thai dishes.

To begin with, check out this weirdness:

Your eyes do not deceive you, this is a real fruit, even though it looks like something out of a Dr. suess book. It's actually pretty tasty.  Here's the inside.

Next up, we have some northern Thai dishes from an alumni event at the nursing dorm. The first one is made from "raw" or unripe jackfruit while the second is made from "raw" mango. These are similar to the more popular (not pictured) papaya salad made from, you guessed it, unripe papaya. I didn't care for the jackfruit one much. The mango one was okay. Papaya salad isn't bad, but too spicy for me. 

And here we have "khanom jeen," or as I like to call it "why exactly do people think Thai food is so great?" 

Khanom jeen is made of noodles that have, to my taste, a seriously unpleasant slimy texture and zero actual flavor. But that's okay because they add an extremely spicy broth mixed with blood to make up for the blandness. And if that wasn't appetizing enough, the dark chunks you see are bits of fried blood. MmmmMmm! I think I'll order seconds. Now that I'm a little more prepared for the weirdness of Thai food, I was actually brave enough to eat one of the blood pieces. If you can get over the texture and the knowledge that it's blood you're eating, it's actually pretty awful. The drink on the left is made from some sort of plant that grows on a bush. It's kind of sour. The green things you see are actually a sort of sweet snack wrapped in banana leaves. Imagine a cross between jello and pudding with a sort of unidentifiable purple center... 

The meal ended with a Thai dessert I'd never tried before. The photo is of the assembly process with the finished product in the bowls on the bottom left. It's kind of like a sno-cone with a mystery-flavor pink syrup. And beans and corn mixed in, because obviously those are logical dessert foods. My tastebuds were seriously confused. Plus it melted after about five seconds so that it basically resembled a bowl of pepto-bismol.

I will end this post with a less confusing but equally strange dessert. Presenting "D-milk."

D-milk is, I guess, a sort of chain. Like Dairy Queen or something. They specialize in milkshakes that have very elaborate toppings. The kicker is that the actual shake tastes like the leftover milk from a cereal bowl. And I'm not talking your boring Fiber One adult cereal. I'm talking Lucky Charms. You can choose up to four toppings to go with your leftover cereal milk, like sprinkles or cornflakes. It is definitely strange but not bad. It mostly makes me want to go watch saturday morning cartoons. 

p.s. I was watching "Foyle's War" on YouTube the other day (excellent show! I highly recommend!) and in the episode one the characters was eating a sandwich. It looked soooo good. Add that to the list of foods I'm going to eat when I come home. And steak. And macaroni and cheese. Maybe all at once. You see, living abroad makes you appreciate the little things.